I stayed up until one, jotting down everything I could recall, but it was no use. There was something buried in the mass of unrelated trivia, but I couldn’t pull it out through the tequila fumes. I staggered to bed in a sleepy stupor, grimly thinking that if only I could have borrowed David Landmaier’s fantastic memory, I could easily have dredged up the answer to the Maxnome riddle and then some.
Then began one hell of a night. It commenced with a lulu of a nightmare in which I was pursued down some very dark and twisting streets by a faceless, ghostly monster brandishing a bloody kitchen knife and yelling “Maxnome” at me in eldritch howls.
I awoke in a cold sweat, hoping that it would be at least six in the morning so I could get out of bed. I found it was only three fifteen. Trying desperately to go back to sleep, I was annoyed by an inane and idiotic phrase that began marching through my brain, back and forth like a huge saw. I tried to tell myself that clinical psychologists were supposed to be impervious to such nonsense, that people came to see me for help with silly problems. This line of reasoning failed to help, and the phrase continued to saw back and forth through my aching brain tissue.
Max Nome has pneumonia, that was the silly phrase. I tried to ignore it, disprove it, forget it, or destroy it, but it would not leave my poor, tortured brain. I finally sat up, turned the lights on, and tried to reason it away. I was using therapeutic technique on myself!
I told myself firmly that I was a fool to ignore the phrase. According to standard, classical doctrine, my unconscious was trying to tell me something important, and the only road back to sanity and sound sleep was to work out what it was trying to tell me. The unconscious is a devious and tricky thing, I reminded myself. Theoretically, it seldom comes out into the open and states anything directly. Instead, it persists in sneaking up on meanings in a misleading and wily manner.
The key word was pneumonia. Perhaps it was a pun, I decided after several moments of bleary-eyed pondering. What did pneumonia sound like? Like nothing on the planet Earth, I decided, and said the hell with Doctor Freud and his insane theories, turned off the lights, and tried to go back to sleep. Just as I was drifting off, a wispy little voice whispered the word mnemonic into my left ear, and that sat me back up and turned the lights on again. Mnemonic was one of those words I never spoke out loud because it raised far too many eyebrows. Still half asleep and wondering how much tequila Elizabeth Anderson had gotten into that one margarita, I wearily asked my unconscious what could the word mnemonic possibly have to do with a weird character named Landmaier and a spook named Max Nome.
The answer woke me completely. Landmaier was an amateur magician and memory expert who did complicated mind-reading acts on a professional level. Memory experts depend heavily on mnemonic devices to help them remember things. When David Landmaier lay dying on a kitchen floor and tried to write out the name of his murderer, his dying brain might have played a trick on him. Instead of the man’s name, it might have fed him one of the many mnemonic patterns that Landmaier associated with that particular name, a pattern off a list with which Elizabeth Anderson had once helped him. Maxnome could be a mnemonic device for remembering something about a man, something with seven letters in it — or seven digits.
I stared at the telephone beside my bed and picked it up gingerly, then dialed the letters M-A-X-N-O-M-E. I heard several rings, then the crisp, professional voice of an operator answered. “What number are you calling, please?”
“Just a minute,” I mumbled foolishly, not knowing what number I was calling. I worked it out from the dial. “Operator, I want 629-6663.”
Several of the longer seconds of my life dragged by, then the girl came back on. “That number has been changed to 629-4562.”
I thanked the operator, then dialed the new number carefully. The phone rang seven times before it was answered by a sleepy, angry, and familiar voice.
“This had better be damned important, fellow,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“It’s your old friend, Mike Karlins,” I said to Dean Ness. “I want to come over and see you about Elizabeth. I think I’ve worked out her problem.”
“That’s important enough.” He sounded delighted. “Come right on over, old buddy. I’ll pour you a double for that.”
I told Dean I’d be right over, hung up, and stared sadly at the phone for a few seconds. “You’d better make it a triple, Dean,” I said to the empty room, then picked up the phone again, and dialed the police.